It's time for evidence-based continuing education for CSRs

Happy National Veterinary Receptionist Week! For this week's episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, welcomes Jill Clark, DVM, founder and chief visionary officer, IGNITE Veterinary Solutions, to discuss why there should be a bigger push to have client service representative (CSR) continuing education out there available. Throughout the episode, Clark and Christman discuss the successful CSR track at last year's Fetch Kansas City conference, the establishment of the North American Association of Veterinary Receptionists (NAAVR), and the importance of evidence-based education for CSRs.

Below is a partial transcript

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: What is your ultimate end goal for CSR continuing education?

Jill Clark, DVM: World domination for CSRs. Small goal, but really, I just want to normalize it. NAAVR is really, is intended to be an organization that is created—and it's been created by us—but be turned over to CSRs as promptly as we possibly can. I want to make sure that it is owned, run, managed by CSRs in the next 24 months, if not sooner. And we've already created a President's Advisory Council that's working towards that, and that primary goal is to make sure that CSR in continuing education is normalized.

So Fetch, so what you guys are doing is awesome, because you're saying, "Yeah, we're going to offer tracks for these folks wherever we're going to meet them where they are, and have it like we will have it for anyone else." And so if we can continue to have that become the norm in veterinary medicine, then I think we're going to see this role move from answering phones and picking up poop in the lobby, to being the gurus of client experience, managing that entire thing from marketing and what we do out on the internet all the way through to the client getting a call back at the end and rebooking and many other, many other things that they're absolutely capable of that our practice managers who are fighting fires aren't necessarily, they just don't have the bandwidth for. So let's elevate this role and make it something it's never been before, and we're going to do that through continuing education basically.